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Auktionsarchiv: Los-Nr. 17

Komar and Melamid

Schätzpreis
200.000 £ - 300.000 £
ca. 321.887 $ - 482.831 $
Zuschlagspreis:
554.500 £
ca. 892.432 $
Auktionsarchiv: Los-Nr. 17

Komar and Melamid

Schätzpreis
200.000 £ - 300.000 £
ca. 321.887 $ - 482.831 $
Zuschlagspreis:
554.500 £
ca. 892.432 $
Beschreibung:

Komar and Melamid Girl in Front of a Mirror 1981-82 oil on canvas 182.2 x 126.4 cm. (71 3/4 x 49 3/4 in.) Signed 'Komar/Melamid 1981-82' lower right.
Provenance Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York Exhibited New York, White Columns, Dirty Pictures, December 1982 - February 1983; Edinborough, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Komar and Melamid, August 10 - September 21, 1985: traveled to Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, October 6 - December 1, 1985; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, December 10, 1985 - January 19, 1986; Arts Council Gallery, Belfast, February 1 - March 2, 1986, ill. in catalogue, p. 16; After Perestroika: Kitchenmaids or Stateswomen, Centre International d'Art Contemporain de Montreal, August 1 - October 10, 1993; The Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, November 6 - December 31, 1993; DePree Art Center and Gallery, Hope College, Holland, MI, February 12 - March 27, 1994; Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, April 18 - June 11, 1994; Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, September 15 - October 23, 1994; Cranbrook Academy of Rt Museum, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield, Michigan, February 7 - April 2, 1995; Art Gallery, Mount Saint Vincent's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, November 12, 1995 - January 7, 1996; Atlanta College of Art Gallery, Atlanta College of Art, Woodruff Center, Atlanta, Georgia, January 26 - March 6, 1996; repro. in b/w in catalogue, p. 40 Catalogue Essay “Maybe time is the most important thing in contemporary art. The most mysterious. It carries us to death. Time is our big boat.” ALEXANDER MELAMID Girl in Front of a Mirror, 1981-82, is an alluring piece by the Russian born American duo comprised of Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid. Exemplifying a key feature recurrently presented in their works, the present lot depicts how the most extremely personal memories are juxtaposed with the broadest historical contexts they live in. The girl portrayed here is caught in a deep, dramatic and very private moment of sexual discovery and awakening, with the audience clearly represented only as observers without any form of interaction. Observing from behind the mirror and with the tall red curtains that separate the setting from the audience, Komar and Melamid create an ambience characterised by a profound intimacy and extreme quietude. The context of the Communist Soviet regime is immediately outlined by the girl’s bright red scarf, together with the darker variations of the colour she is submersed in. At a time when the Western art world was fully immersed in the Pop-art scene that attempted to blur the line between mass culture and high art, the two artists produced a number of works unified by a goal of crossing the border between private and public. Komar and Melamid’s thirty year collaboration began when the pair first met at the Stroganov School of Art, where they mutually began producing works appropriated by a satiric perspective, influenced by the conscious fusion of Western Pop Art and Soviet Socialist Realism. This collaboration consequentially led to the emergence of the pioneering Sots Art movement, one that spurred loud controversies through its mimicking of ideological aesthetics that had been massively produced by the propaganda machine of the official Communist ideology. The pair was unsurprisingly expelled from the Union of Artists in 1973, charged with ‘distortion of Soviet Reality’, and their works were repeatedly destroyed by Soviet officials in the following years. This immediately led to an international scandal that allowed them to form contacts with a New York gallery owner Ronald Feldman, a central figure in their career development, who helped organise the secret smuggling of their work to be exhibited in the US. When captivated by this image, links to The Camden Town group inevitably surface. Both seem to make art that investigates scenes of visual as well psychological urban life, dragging the viewer into an exaggerated past reality, vividly depicted by the artist. While clearly a product of the Komar and Melamid’s imagination, the red

Auktionsarchiv: Los-Nr. 17
Auktion:
Datum:
16.10.2013
Auktionshaus:
Phillips
London
Beschreibung:

Komar and Melamid Girl in Front of a Mirror 1981-82 oil on canvas 182.2 x 126.4 cm. (71 3/4 x 49 3/4 in.) Signed 'Komar/Melamid 1981-82' lower right.
Provenance Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York Exhibited New York, White Columns, Dirty Pictures, December 1982 - February 1983; Edinborough, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Komar and Melamid, August 10 - September 21, 1985: traveled to Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, October 6 - December 1, 1985; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, December 10, 1985 - January 19, 1986; Arts Council Gallery, Belfast, February 1 - March 2, 1986, ill. in catalogue, p. 16; After Perestroika: Kitchenmaids or Stateswomen, Centre International d'Art Contemporain de Montreal, August 1 - October 10, 1993; The Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, November 6 - December 31, 1993; DePree Art Center and Gallery, Hope College, Holland, MI, February 12 - March 27, 1994; Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, April 18 - June 11, 1994; Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, September 15 - October 23, 1994; Cranbrook Academy of Rt Museum, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield, Michigan, February 7 - April 2, 1995; Art Gallery, Mount Saint Vincent's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, November 12, 1995 - January 7, 1996; Atlanta College of Art Gallery, Atlanta College of Art, Woodruff Center, Atlanta, Georgia, January 26 - March 6, 1996; repro. in b/w in catalogue, p. 40 Catalogue Essay “Maybe time is the most important thing in contemporary art. The most mysterious. It carries us to death. Time is our big boat.” ALEXANDER MELAMID Girl in Front of a Mirror, 1981-82, is an alluring piece by the Russian born American duo comprised of Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid. Exemplifying a key feature recurrently presented in their works, the present lot depicts how the most extremely personal memories are juxtaposed with the broadest historical contexts they live in. The girl portrayed here is caught in a deep, dramatic and very private moment of sexual discovery and awakening, with the audience clearly represented only as observers without any form of interaction. Observing from behind the mirror and with the tall red curtains that separate the setting from the audience, Komar and Melamid create an ambience characterised by a profound intimacy and extreme quietude. The context of the Communist Soviet regime is immediately outlined by the girl’s bright red scarf, together with the darker variations of the colour she is submersed in. At a time when the Western art world was fully immersed in the Pop-art scene that attempted to blur the line between mass culture and high art, the two artists produced a number of works unified by a goal of crossing the border between private and public. Komar and Melamid’s thirty year collaboration began when the pair first met at the Stroganov School of Art, where they mutually began producing works appropriated by a satiric perspective, influenced by the conscious fusion of Western Pop Art and Soviet Socialist Realism. This collaboration consequentially led to the emergence of the pioneering Sots Art movement, one that spurred loud controversies through its mimicking of ideological aesthetics that had been massively produced by the propaganda machine of the official Communist ideology. The pair was unsurprisingly expelled from the Union of Artists in 1973, charged with ‘distortion of Soviet Reality’, and their works were repeatedly destroyed by Soviet officials in the following years. This immediately led to an international scandal that allowed them to form contacts with a New York gallery owner Ronald Feldman, a central figure in their career development, who helped organise the secret smuggling of their work to be exhibited in the US. When captivated by this image, links to The Camden Town group inevitably surface. Both seem to make art that investigates scenes of visual as well psychological urban life, dragging the viewer into an exaggerated past reality, vividly depicted by the artist. While clearly a product of the Komar and Melamid’s imagination, the red

Auktionsarchiv: Los-Nr. 17
Auktion:
Datum:
16.10.2013
Auktionshaus:
Phillips
London
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